The Trials of Winston T Gorilla
by Blackadder261
Summary: Winston's attempts to resolve Tracer's Chronal Dissociation following the Slipstream Incident. The idea is mainly to get a look at Winston's thoughts and feelings as he tries to fix a problem he sees as being his fault.
1. 1: Flashpoint

AUTHOR NOTE

This story is going to look at a possible strand following the Slipstream incident, taking a closer look at Winston's efforts to resolve Tracer's disorder.

It's also going to try and take a closer look at his emotions and behaviour during this time: The frustration of failed attempts, the despair of not knowing whether it can be done, the overwhelming joy of success.

The title isn't meant as an insult to Winston. It popped into my head as an idea when I saw a program called "The Trials of Robert J. Oppenheimer" on PBS America. Oppenheimer was a nuclear physicist who helped pioneer the Manhattan project. You may have seen one of his quotes if you've read _Destroyer of Worlds,_ the Torbjörn comic.

I felt it rather fitting. Enjoy this, anyway.

1: Flashpoint

4 months after the Slipstream accident

Winston awoke from yet another night of broken sleep. Ever since the accident, he had not been able to sleep. There were too many questions in his mind.

 _Why did the matrix malfunction? Why didn't I run more tests first? What happened to Tracer? Why did I let her fly it? Why didn't I stop this from happening?_

He sighed. _I suppose there's nothing I can do to rewind time._

He sat down at his workbench and pored over the plans he had drawn up. Even though Tracer had been located a month earlier, she was by no means in a good state. THAT was the part bothering Winston. She flickered in and out of reality like the bulb of the lamp next to him. He hit the side of the lamp, knocking the circuit back into line and stopping the flickering. He winced. _Flickering, just like... her._ As far as anyone could tell, whatever had happened to the Slipstream, happened in a way to Tracer. _She_ now had these problems.

He looked across at the sterile chamber. The box he had desynchronised was still flickering away. For some reason, ininanimate objects seemed to remain in the present, albeit unstable. Yet living beings, like her, could only stay in place for a short time. Seconds, minutes at most. It just didn't make any sense to him: something which worked for inanimate objects didn't for the living.

He pored over his scribbled notes again, looking at each formula. trying to figure out what could help to put this right, somehow. He was her best bet. Her only bet. The rest of the physicists were out of ideas already. _'It can't be done. There's no way to put her right.'_ He refused to believe them. There must be a way! If it can happen in the first place, then something can be done to undo it.

He leaned back in his chair. His eyes lit up as an idea occurred to him.The equation his hand was resting on.

He took the Chronal Restabiliser, which he had been working on since Tracer had been retrieved and her condition documented. He reprogrammed it with the new parameter. _This might just be it!_ He could feel the excitement build inside him as the possibility of solving this, putting right what he felt he had done wrong, came within reach. This wasn't like his previous attempt, this was a breakthrough.

He walked across to the chamber with the Stabiliser. Placing it next to one of the boxes within there, he closed the door and stood at the viewing porthole. He held his breath and flicked the switch.

The entire lab was lit up by a bright, neon-blue glow. sparks permeates the air around the device. And then, everything went dark for a moment. Winston opened the door. His eyes widened as he saw the box was no longer flickering, but _stable_.

"Yes! It's-" The box cut off his train of thought abruptly. It started to make a slight buzzing sound, then stopped.

 _No, no!_

The buzzing started again before the box returned to instability.

Winston's expression dropped. _No. So close..._

He slouched back into his chair, somewhat defeated.

"I don't get it," he muttered to himself, "everything looks right and yet it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong? What am I missing?"

He glanced at the clock on his desk. It read 03:28. He'd been awake for theory hours straight trying to understand this part of the puzzle. He yawned.

"Well, perhaps some sleep will fix this."

"Quite right Winston, your brain activity levels are below average due to fatigue and sleep deprivation. Setting your alarm for 13:30."

He jumped slightly. "Damn it Athena! I forgot you didn't sleep. Would you mind taking a look at this while I get some sleep?"

The AI chuckled. "Of course not. You sleep, while I try and understand what you are looking at."

He staggered over to his bed in the corner of the room, collapsing onto it and falling asleep virtually as soon as he hit it.

"Goodnight, Winston."


	2. 2: Nightmares and Revolutions

2: Nightmares and Revolutions

That morning, 0950 hours.

Winston stirred in his sleep. Athena checked his vitals and brain activity. The same as it had been every night since the Slipstream Incident. The same nightmares plaguing him.

 _The night that Horizon imploded on itself. The other gorillas in the colony tearing the scientists limb from limb. Winston powerless to do anything but watch. The sensation of emptiness as he floated back to Earth in his jury-rigged pod, leaving the facility behind._

 _The day of the Slipstream's first crewed test. His glee at seeing the product of months of trials, tests and simulations come to fruition. His joy at the thought that soon, his technology would be turning the tide of the war against the Omnium._

 _The change he felt, as its plucky young pilot clambered inside the cockpit, and sealed the canopy. The glee and joy gave way to something else. Not fear, not quite. Something similar. A knot in his stomach. He didn't know why, but he had a terrible feeling as the sleek superfighter climbed skyward and completed its initial flight tests._

 _The horror as the exchange over the radio changed once the matrix was engaged for the first jump._

 _"W-Winston? Something's not right here, the controls are-AAAAAA!"_

 _A loud scream pierced the channel._

 _"Tracer? Tracer, come in. Tracer, Respond!"_

 _The chasm that seemed to open up within him as he looked skyward, to a bright flash. And the Slipstream, which had been there a fraction of a second earlier, disappeared._

 _The relief and confusion the day she was found. Sitting in the back of the SAR VTOL as it homed in. The feeling of sheer incomprehension as her form flickered in and out of existence. The feeking he had once had returned, the feeling of helplessness the night of the Horizon Uprising._

He sprang awake. The same way things had happened for three months. He glanced at the clock. 10.15. _I've barely been asleep for seven hours._

He looked over the work Athena had done in his sleep. He mused that even an AI as advanced as her could not figure this problem out. What chance should he rightly have?

He Turned his attention to something which Athena had highlighted. Yet another equation. He pondered it for a few moments, turning it over in his mind. At last, the light inside his mind clicked on. _I wonder if that can help account for what I'm missing!_ He started to work feverishly, uprating the Stabilizer in order to accomodate the new method of function.

Several hours later, he was ready. Still suffering somewhat from fatigue, he geared up the test chamber for what he believed- hoped- would be the last time. He flicked the switch. No flash this time. The stabilizer ran for a few minutes perfectly. He opened the door and went inside the chamber, ignoring Athena's pleas otherwise.

He stood over the device. As though to confirm Athena's suspicions, the device begun to make an electrical buzzing sound. Smoke begun to work from the Stabilizer as the light inside it faded to black, completely burnt out. The frustration of being so close- yet unable to get the device working- combined with sleep deprivation and the prospect of having to start over , finally overwhelmed Winston as he lost his temper. He picked up the dead stabilizer and threw it in a fit of pique through the door of the chamber before proceeding to destroy several objects inside the chamber.

After a while, he came back to his senses. He trugded out, somewhat defeated, before deciding to find what was left of the stabiliser and start once again on the solution. As he picked it up, he uncovered something else. An article clipping inside a box which he had taken almost twenty years ago. It was from one of the scientific journals Winston had read. The scientist in question was his second-biggest inspiration, behind Harold whom he had named himself after. He dug out some more of the items within.

A light clicked into place inside his mind. This guy had been legendary within the scientific community, something of an Einstein, prior to the nuclear reactor he conducted most of his research at detonating and presumably vaporizing him with it. It occurred to Winston that although there was little proof of his survival, there was less to prove that he was dead.

"Athena, search. Parameters: Doctor James Lamont."

"Right away, Winston."

Moments later, Athena had located virtually every digital file regarding the scientist. The conventions he had appeared at, the radical creations he had came up with, and one article in particular. Winston recalled that this scientist in particular was renowned as an outcast- a black sheep- as he had always argued against Relativity. He had always believed that objects _could_ go beyond lightspeed, which in itself had inspired Winston to look into the concept. Winston was willing to bet that the work James had once done trying to disprove Einstein might hold the answer to his problem.


	3. 3: Acceleration

3: Acceleration

Winston disseminated every article, gleaning whatever useful information he could find within it. He wished he had thought of this sooner. One section in particular had caught his attention:

" _It has been presumed since the creation of Classical Relativity by Einstein that time is tangible, a solid object. I cannot say that I feel the same way. As Relativity is believed to offer the prospect of time travel, and that we understand that to achieve time travel we must break away from a speed defined by light. Time in itself is not a scalar- static within the universe- but a vector, as dynamic as that which surrounds and encompasses it._

 _It is only once we begin to look at time itself in this way that we shall fully and properly understand its properties: perhaps, one day, we shall master and harness its potential._ "

Winston put the holoreader down on his desk. _It suddenly makes sense! All this time I've been trying to make something stable which is already stable!_

He took out the blueprint for the chronal stabiliser once again. He scanned over the equations that he had attempted to use. _That explains a lot. The objects aren't dissociated because they're unstable, they're dissociated because they're dropping in and out of the same speed as the rest of the universe._

He erased what had been written there, instead replacing it with one of the equations that formed the theorized relationship between time and relativity. Before he went any further, a though occurred to him. _Hold up, what if the speed of time changes naturally, like air pressure, like wind speed, like temperature? Maybe that's why Tracer keeps appearing and disappearing, rather than remaining here or remaining list to the ether._

Winston set about solving this problem. As far as he could tell, without a means of controlling the speed at which this accelerator worked, it would still be useless. It was an arduous task, especially when he kept suffering microburst sleep at almost every blink of his eyes. Almost a day passed as he worked to make the controller work in two ways: Firstly, it has to be able to maintain a constant sync with the time around it; second, he decided that it should have a manual override as well, as the thought had struck him that being able to manipulate time in some way might have its uses.

He was pleased with the end result. There was only one thing left to do: Test the new device.

He opened the chamber door, and placed the new Accelerator next to the destabilized boxes. For this test, he was leaving the controller purely in automatic mode, seeing as how it wasn't attached to anyone who could control it.

He sealed the door and stood at the glass. His palm hovered over the actuation switch as he hesitated. _I hope this works. It's my last shot. If it fails, then I...I..._

He shook his head, forcing the thought out of his mind. _No. I'm not about to give up on her. I'm the reason she needs this now, so it's my responsibility to put her right again somehow. At whatever cost._

He slammed his palm onto the actuator. A blue flash blinded him for a moment, bathing the entire lab in a neon-blue hue. He squinted as the light dimmed slightly. His eyes widened in surprise as he saw that not only was the box next to the accelerator stable once more, but almost every item within the chamber was back in its normal form. Without warning, the blue hue vanished and the lab returned to its dim state. The objects returned to flickering states.

"No. No, No! This can't be!"

He opened the chamber and charged across to the now-dormant device. Turning it over and over, he barely maintained composure as he tried to understand what had gone wrong.

As his hope faded, something dawned on him. Looking at the dial inside the device, he realized that it had run out of energy. Moving it close to an object still had the desired effect, but in this state it could only keep one item at a time locked in the present. Relief and fatigue combined, as Winston's horror at what he thought had been another failed test subsided into relief. _Finally. It works! It actually works!_

He could barely help but laugh uncontrollably.

"Athena, save the lab footage and record the data from this test for later."

At last, the constant stress and fatigue had taken its toll on Winston, as he collapsed with a resounding thud onto the lab floor and fell asleep, finally at peace in the knowledge that he could undo what he had caused.

Angela opened the door to the lab. She'd seen a spike on the various power anomaly readouts for the facility, and decided to check it out.

"Mein Gott, Winston, what's happened to you?" she gasped, looking at him. Relief washed over her as she heard him snoring and realised that far from being at peril, he was merely exhausted from his non-stop efforts to resolve Tracer's condition.

She glanced at the device he still clasped in his hands, which appeared tiny and dainty compared to the massive size of his hands.

"Athena, call up lab footage."

"Certainly, Doctor Ziegler. You should be pleased with the result."

Angela reviewed the test that Winston had just conducted.

As she was about to take the device from him, she reconsidered. _It's his work, after all. It's best that he gives it to Tracer-when he wakes up._

She strode back to the door, almost with a spring in her step at the joy of Winston's success.

"Gute nacht, Athena."

"Goodnight, Doctor Ziegler."

She smiled. "Gute nacht, Winston."

With that, she flicked the lights in the lab off, closed the door and continued on her way back to the control centre, glancing out East over the strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean as the sun begun to materialise on the horizon.

AUTHOR MORE

Well, that's almost this story at a close. I've got one more part to write, and then I think I'll be happy with the end-state. I hope you are as well.


	4. Epilogue: Normality

Epilogue: Normality

3 days later.

Tracer had barely phased back into the present when Winston appeared at the door. He couldn't help but smile. _Finally, my mistake can be put right. Let's not wait until she phases in later._ He popped the hatch of the chamber she was in open and strode inside gleefully.

He looked at the expression on her face. As a result of the dissociation she still couldn't speak- more accurately, she could speak, but nobody could hear her which appeared as more of a mouthing action- but the look she gave him said _'This had better be some bloody good news.'_

He had concealed the accelerator behind his back as he came in, so as to surprise her. As he got within a few feet of her, he revealed it. For now at least, he had powered down the device into its low-energy mode: the very mode he mistook for it having failed a few days ago. He passed it to her. As she reached out to grab it, her eyes widened in shock. For almost four months, she had been unable to interact with any object, asuuming of course she was actually _in_ the present. As her fingers reached the device, her body begun to return to normal.

The flickering, opaque blue ghost she had been solidified back into her, as she returned fully to the present. She clutched the device briefly, before releasing it and diving at Winston, hugging him as tightly as she could, sobbing with joy. He felt a tear come to his eye, as he returned the hug, being careful not to accidentally crush her. That wouldn't be particularly good.

It had finally worked.

"I knew you wouldn't give up", she uttered, still sobbing somewhat as she came to terms with being normal again.

"Give up? What do you think I am, a human?" He chuckled as he replied.

She jabbed him in the chest, jokingly. "Ow!"

"Still a soft spot there huh, big guy?"

"Not quite." He laughed as he squeezed her slightly, lifting her into the air, squealing.

"Also, there's a few things you'll need to understand before we can turn you loose. I've written an instruction manual that should... Let me guess, you'd rather the short version?" He asked, noticing Tracer's cocked head and somewhat sarcastic glare.

"Uh huh."

"First things first: Don't lose or destroy the accelerator. Without it..." He tailed off, noting that she had gone slightly pale. _Ah. I forgot about the impact this whole thing musta had on her mind. Oops._

"You okay?" She nodded. "I'm fine, Winston. Just... don't remind me of what could happen. I'd rather die than go through that again."

Winstone nodded, continuing.

"Second: You can control the speed at which your local time field operates. Fancy wording aside, this means you can time travel in a way. To an onlooker, you'll appear to teleport. The only problem is that when you do, the accelerator's light will leave a blue trace. Rather sitting, given your callsign." He noted the glare she was giving him, for that comment especially. "Alright, I take that back. Sorry." She smiled at him as though to say _'Apology Accepted, big guy. I'll get you later.'_

"Third: keep an eye on the dial inside that watch", gesturing at the watch he had given her with dials regarding the accelerator built in, "If the dial is empty then you won't be able to use any of the abilities it grants you. It'll just keep you in the present. Don't worry about it running out of juice: it's got an emergency reserve built in that'll last decades, _if_ you manage it right." She giggled at this last comment. _Thought you'd respond like that: being responsible with anything isn't your style. Like your flying._ He smiled slightly, remembering some of the... less sanctioned aeeobatics he'd seen her once pull over the airbase commander's house.

"That's about it. If you damage it, get back here as soon as you can and I'll put it right. Any questions?"

"Nope. Well, one actually."

"Go on?"

"When will they let me loose in battle?"

He smiled. "I knew you'd ask that. Morrison wants you on evaluation as soon as you're ready. From there, once we're happy the accelerator works under those conditions, you'll be allowed to operate as part of the Strike Team."

She couldn't suppress a smile. "Thank God for that! I was terrified they would put me on a desk job."

He smiled as the pair of them walked to the Combat Evaluation Centre.

 _If she fights anything like she used to fly, then it wouldn't surprise me if Morrison lets her loose in the field by next week._ His smile grew somewhat.

 _God help the bad guys._

AUTHOR ENDNOTE

Well, that's it. Apologies to those who think this is quite short, but I couldn't really extend it much further. Hence why I started months after the Slipstream rather than, say, a week after.

I might write another Winston-related story sometime. Probably based around the events of the Horizon Incident, where the simians killed all of the scientists: including Dr Harold Winston, whom Winston named himself after.

Hope you enjoyed it.

B.


	5. Author Note

**AUTHOR NOTE**

 **Well, folks, I suppose it was going to be the case some day or other, but today is that day.**

 **Effective immediately, I'll be moving my activity over to AO3. I've already set up shop there and got a few stories up and running, and my aim is to have all the LiS stories moved across by the end of the week. Overwatch stories which I've written will be staying here permanently.**

 **I'll still check this account periodically for the sake of correspondence as I'm not as ignorant as some would make out. I'll also be on here to read stories based here anyway, the only change being that no further upsates will be made.**

 **Why, you may ask? Well, despite a lack of a mobile app and a shorter store time for draft chapters, I find AO3 is somewhat easier to use.** **Formatting tools are up to more, the general editing mode is slicker and it'seasier for me to keep track of reviews and feedback**

 **Find my account** **under the same name as this account, Blackadder261.**

 **Until next time, guys.**

 **P.S: This is a standardised message across all existing stories. All stories, complete or otherwise, will remain in their current state.** **All unfinished stories will be retagged as incomplete so as to avoid provoking any issues.**


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